Here's something I don't get about Coventry...

[seasong]

I don't know about that. I've always thought of Infinity as villainous, and the good Doctor who started it as a perfect model of an overly ambitious scientist whose greed and control freak-ism drove him to commit a rather heinous crime. It may be the antiauthoritarian in me, but a 50s era mad scientist (or his Buckaroo posse) put in charge of everything just never seemed like a "solution."

But that never stopped me from liking the setting.

[LoneWolf23k]

From what I've read of the description in the Campaigns book, Coventry's very existance is somewhat controversial. It's only used in situations where the Eraser drug won't work, and is somewhat preferable to the Centrum alternative of simply killing the person who "knows too much".

The sidebox containing that information does point that there's a mentality amongst Homeline inhabitants that outtimers are somewhat "inferior" then Homeliners, and that it's something of a problem.

[Metaphysica]

Originally Posted by LoneWolf23k

The sidebox containing that information does point that there's a mentality amongst Homeline inhabitants that outtimers are somewhat "inferior" then Homeliners, and that it's something of a problem.

Right, and the difficulties of a large crosstime organization remaining in any way "pure" make the setting much more realistic. It's not verisimilitude of setting that bothers me, but I wonder how I could play a man or woman (or robot) of good conscience within this organization without a constant White Wolf-esque line of internal torment running under the surface (not bashing WW, oldWoD was my favorite setting for ten years). My conflict with playing or running in this setting is how to keep this concern about coventry, and methods of keeping The Secret from taking over the goals of every PC I try to play. This isn't even like Aberrant, where the UN backed organization for helping new Novas come to grips with their powers was rumored to be sterilizing the Novas, this is an open, publicly known policy of abduction and imprisonment without concern for human (or sapient's) rights.

I guess it comes down to the fact that I never for a moment considered joining the RL US military because I knew I couldn't trust them to order me to do the right things, and I feel like a person of similar conscience that I might want to play in the Infinite Worlds setting would be unable to join Infinity.

Originally Posted by DryaUnda

With Infinite Worlds being the official setting for GURPS, something seriously needs to be done regarding Coventry, as urgently as the 4e covers needed reworking. I'm hopefully mistaken but, apart from the Infinite Worlds Wiki, the main setting seems to have gotten an underwhelming reaction.

Glad to hear you agree with me DryaUnda, but had hoped that the IW setting would be solid and remain for as long as GURPS 3e did, since it's supposed to be the official setting for G4e, but what I'm seeing, and what I'm hearing from several of you, is that we'll all make one of our early campaigns in IW a group of Infinity agents acting to change Inifinity's policies regarding Coventry and The Secret, then we'll all have our own little versions of IW where a better solution has been found. This kind of kills the universal setting before it even gets started.

Interested in hearing more of what you guys have to say. Let me know if you plan to use IW as a setting w/ or w/o changing Infinity's policies, and if you plan to make Infinity an heroic organization.

Thanks for the input,
Meta

[CraigR]

Originally Posted by Metaphysica

Interested in hearing more of what you guys have to say. Let me know if you plan to use IW as a setting w/ or w/o changing Infinity's policies, and if you plan to make Infinity an heroic organization.

Yeah, I'm semi-abandoning the IW setting for my own setup. This one uses I-travel that takes time, allowing for something that feels more like Star Trek or maybe space opera. Ships, of a variety of types, traveling through metadimensional space (which can vary of form or consistency) encountering all sorts of human and alien civilizations, both from specific worlds and native to the Meta itself. Angels, demons, gods, and Lovecraftian horrors all dwell in the distant places between the worlds.

The realism dial can be cranked in a lot of directions, too, making things seem like Starfleet or Spalljammer, as the players like. I'm using a bunch of stuff from GURPS CABAL and GURPS SPACE, and anything else that seems appropiate. When I have something more coherent, I'll post it. (Or maybe I should try to sell it as a Pyramid Article?)

Craig

[quarkstomper]

I've never run the Infinite Worlds setting myself, but I've had a couple of successful Dimension-Hopping games using a customized verison of the Horatio Club from GURPS Time Travel. On the plus side, the setting makes it easy to bring in characters ("You must have made a wrong turn somewhere because when you walked through that last door you ended up here") and in enabled me to do a few good story arcs based on unraveling mysteries behind the Club. Also, there is no Authority telling people they Must Go On This Mission, something which bugs some of the more anti-authoritarian players in my group.

On the down side, there is no Authority telling people They Must Go On This Mission. That means I have to come up with more clever plot hooks to get the party involved in my story.

[Pesterfield]

http://www.ahtg.net/alterframe.html is a site with several interesting alternate worlds, and possible a different view on how an Infinity type organization could work.

[WineShark]

Originally Posted by Metaphysica

R It's not verisimilitude of setting that bothers me, but I wonder how I could play a man or woman (or robot) of good conscience within this organization without a constant White Wolf-esque line of internal torment running under the surface (not bashing WW, oldWoD was my favorite setting for ten years). My conflict with playing or running in this setting is how to keep this concern about coventry, and methods of keeping The Secret from taking over the goals of every PC I try to play. This isn't even like Aberrant, where the UN backed organization for helping new Novas come to grips with their powers was rumored to be sterilizing the Novas, this is an open, publicly known policy of abduction and imprisonment without concern for human (or sapient's) rights.

So why not drop the idea of Coventry and change who and what Infinity is for? Although the "official" campaign setting for 4e, there's still the element of "use what parts you like, chuck the rest" in IW. If playing the setting out of the box is not your style, change the setting. You can take it so many directions, just leave out or modify the parts that are gray.

I don't really want some "shared" world where we all agree that the world is believable, realistic, moral, etc. etc. Since that is unlikely, I hope that players and GMs remember that the setting is a guide, not a bible.

I am intrigued by IW. I see many that aren't. So be it. But the spite over the "official campaign world" is unnecessary. IW makes an ideal "official" setting because it encompasses just about any style of game you can think of. It's a condensed version of any given GURPS supplement, and a gimme on how to run characters across any of them. IOOW it's an ideal vehicle at showing of the universal nature of GUPRS. Hence, it's a great "official" world book.

Run the setting, don't let the setting run you. I think few enough GURPS players try to run settings "out of the box." I'm rather surprised to see such opposition, since if you didn't like Time Travel, Alternate Worlds, etc. before, what's to like now? Slapping an "official" tag on it makes it useful for promotion, but certainly doesn't limit who and how you can play.

I plan to play IW. I plan to make the characters heroic, even if Infinity sometimes isn't. Kind of a blend of Covert Ops, Black Ops and Spec Ops, and Cops. There will be a healthy dose of morality, and Infinty may not always do the right thing. But the players will get to make choices and have an effect. I guess that "good conscience" is the key element.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Metaphysica

Interested in hearing more of what you guys have to say. Let me know if you plan to use IW as a setting w/ or w/o changing Infinity's policies, and if you plan to make Infinity an heroic organization.

Personally I always viewed the whole Infinity and Coventry being the only players in the crosstime travel game back in GURPS 3e as totally unrealistic. I mean in a multiverse filled with realities of differing physcial laws certainal parachronics would not be the only way to move around in it. This is why I am glad to see a more diverse view of how crosstime travel works hinted at in the Basic Set.

Hopefully the fact that Infinity got totally flat footed by Reich-5 using world jumpers will finally drive home to the TPTB in the UN that the genie is out of the bottle and consider making alliences with some of the more advanced worlds.

[prosfilaes]

Originally Posted by maximara

Personally I always viewed the whole Infinity and Coventry being the only players in the crosstime travel game back in GURPS 3e as totally unrealistic. I mean in a multiverse filled with realities of differing physcial laws certainal parachronics would not be the only way to move around in it.

How can you speak with such certainty? Just because the physical laws of the universes are quite varied, doesn't mean that the physical laws of the metauniverse are so varied. There could easily be strict laws on which universes can use parachronics and how. Given that none of us have read even the popular science books on how paracronics work, I don't think we're in a place to call one model of parachronics totally unrealistic with respect to the other models.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by prosfilaes

How can you speak with such certainty? Just because the physical laws of the universes are quite varied, doesn't mean that the physical laws of the metauniverse are so varied.

But if those laws were not varied than *all* Parachronic travel would work everywhere. Since it doesn't (Homeline vs Coventry case in point) then it logically follows that there are other forms of crosstime travel that will be favored by certain laws. This is now a given by what Reich-5 has done with world jumpers and that the Cabal seems to have a method that Infinity cannot detect.